Gatherings

loannis Karalias, the Greek poet, architect, and painter has emerged in Greece and the United States as a prominent culture figure in our contemporary times. His new collection of poetry, "Gatherings" is a dreamlike piece preoccupied by love, either lost or haphazardly acquired, self-identity, relationships, and deep issues of doubt and reckoning, as well as other memories from his past that he chooses now to present and elaborate. The poetry is free verse and deals with timeless subjects drawn from his imagination and his experience—each piece holds so much to be savored and absorbed.

With rich details and an always-distinct sense of emotion, the reader feels transported to the author's material or emotional landscape. According to Christian Narkiewicz-Laine, the Finnish-American poet who translated this collection and wrote the introduction, loannis Karalias "has written words and phrases composed from his soul; impressions destined into the realm of the unknown, but never forgotten, written on something more concrete than any man-made material; and yet, as ephemeral as a passing cloud." Narkiewicz-Laine compares the voice of this Greek poet to Nikos Kazantzakis as the "highest circle of spiraling power".

Each word presented here is striking, bringing a range of feelings to the surface for the reader. The poems are emotionally-charged and yet written in clean, sparse language and stacked with metaphor. They ache with longing and emotion. The poet is torn between a desire for an accessible public mode of discourse and the license to explore inner realities whose articulation hovers perilously close to a private closed system.

Soft Cover: Perfect Bound
Pages: 108 pages
Publish Year: 2013
ISBN: 0-935119-35-3